The invention relates to a masking module for a surveillance system, wherein the surveillance system includes at least one surveillance camera and is suitable and/or situated for observing surveillance regions containing moving objects, comprising a selection device for selecting objects as selected objects, wherein the masking module is designed to output selected objects or subregions thereof—which are referred to below in totality as selected objects—in a masked form. The invention furthermore relates to a corresponding method for masking selected objects, and a computer program.
Video surveillance systems usually include a plurality of surveillance cameras which are directed to surveillance regions and depict the surveillance regions as surveillance scenes. Video surveillance systems are used e.g. in plants or companies, and in public places, intersections, train stations, or other buildings. The streams of image data from the surveillance cameras are often combined in a surveillance center, where they are stored or evaluated manually or in an automated manner.
In addition to the obvious advantages of video surveillance systems of that type for ensuring safety in surveillance regions and, optionally, for tracking suspicious objects, it is a challenge, however, to protect the privacy of persons in areas under video surveillance. Privacy must be protected for any number of reasons. For example, it may be uncomfortable for pedestrians to be under constant, trackable surveillance by all possible video surveillance systems. There is also the issue of data security and of storing personal data when pedestrians are randomly recorded and their images are permanently stored.
To adequately respect privacy, surveillance cameras are typically positioned such that only relevant surveillance regions are observed and recorded. Another possibility is to use physical structures to shield regions that should be protected, e.g. by shielding view, or to hide regions when configuring the cameras, in which case a detailed region of the camera image is simply hidden or blacked out.
Publication US 2007/0116328 A1 discloses a method for masking bare skin in recorded video images, with the goal of meeting society's expectations on decency. The regions of bare skin are detected by analyzing the content of the video image and are then hidden using a mask.
Publication US 2005/0129272 A1, which is the closest prior art, discloses a video surveillance system that incorporates object masking, wherein a processor identifies at least one object in a surveillance scene, which is then visually masked using a color mask or the like. The object is identified by evaluating a color distribution, a geometric shape, a dependence of a first geometric shape on a second geometric shape, a grayscale value, or information on texture.